The Speed of Darkness
by RalynnFrost
Summary: The Shanti Virus - Strain 138 has been unleashed within Primatech beginning a deadly countdown until the end as we know it. AU working around "Powerless"
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

><p>Claire adjusted the camera on its stand so that the recorder would sit evenly and flipped the digital display around, peering into the lens to make sure that the view was focused appropriately. Satisfied that the video settings were to her liking she crossed the short space to the stool that she had pulled aside and took a seat. Her bloodshot eyes lost their mark to the blinking red light for a moment, lost in a haze of discordinate thought. Under the flickering fluorescents the camera caught her sickly pallor, her paling lips, and the thin sheen of sweat that clung to her brow. With a shuddering sigh and a tremble in her weakening shoulders she began her story.<p>

"My name is Claire Bennet. It's March 27, 2007, and one week ago today a man named Adam Monroe released the Shanti Virus in Odessa, Texas. We - we thought that we could contain the virus inside of the vault at Primatech, but nobody knew…" Claire's glazed eyes drifted again until she regained her concentration. "Strain 138 was developed by the Company to be a fail-safe. Something to use in a worst case scenario." She dropped her chin with a sardonic smile and another shiver. "Well, they got what they wanted. This is _the_ worst case scenario.

"The virus crossed over into the general population two days after it escaped. It became air-borne the day after that. We're doing everything that we can to find a cure, but 138 is immune to both Mohinder Suresh's antibodies and my blood.

"All of the U.S. is currently under quarantine. The borders are closed, and all of the airports have been shut down. The - the," she gave off a full body shudder and turned away from the camera's direct view to wipe a small dribble of dark red blood from her nose. "The military is keeping everyone out of the streets. People are barricaded in their homes. Or at least that's the way it was before communications died. There hasn't been a news report in two days. There's nothing on the TV or radio. We don't know anything that's going on outside of ground zero anymore."

Claire swept a rogue lock of lifeless hair from where it fell in her eyes back into an untidy ponytail. "Someone -" she violently coughed into her hand, wiping away the flecks of blood that tarnished her skin onto her jeans afterward. "Someone told me that it was my job to help keep history alive. That it was up to us to make sure that people never forgot. I guess maybe that's what I'm doing here." She let slip a feeble smile for her own futile intentions. "For all I know this is the end of the world and there's nobody left to save… But if someone finds this… You all need to know what really happened here. And you deserve to know that there were people that did everything they could to stop it.

"I don't know how long we have left. There's only a couple of us now. But we'll keep trying - keep fighting until it's over." Another harsh cough lead to a turbulent lurch in her stomach. Her eyes opened wide for the camera a second before the heave brought up a slosh of black-red blood to splash over the cement floor. Amidst a slew of choked coughing and strangled gasps for air Claire fell from her stool landing with a dull thud.

Sounds of gagging and pained whimpers continued to be recorded by the camera even though its subject had disappeared from sight. "Claire?" A flash of blonde passed within view of the lens as Adam rushed to her aide. He tugged her limp form into his arms, rocking her back and forth in what was meant to be soothing movements while he whispered reassurances that were muffled from the video. "Peter!" he cried out in panic when her head lolled around to flop onto his shoulder.

"Turn that thing off," a low, velvety baritone growled from somewhere behind the camera. "No one needs to see her like this." The world fell sideways for a moment when the tripod was tipped over sending the recorder sliding across the floor. Static fuzz crackled across the screen before picking up another angle showing a pair of black men's boots, a smaller white sneaker, and faint traces of electric blue sparks.

"One - two - three - four - five," Peter counted out. "Breathe!"

"Nothing," Adam panted worriedly.

"One - two - three," Peter cycled his compressions again. "Breathe!"

"Still nothing."

"One - two - three… Come on, Claire! Breathe!"

"Clear!" An electrical surge lit up the camera's screen with a charged sizzle before the power grid popped leaving pitch-black in its wake.


	2. Contamination

**1**

**Contamination**

* * *

><p><em>March 20, 2007<em>

"Go. Get the virus," Peter directed Adam as he turned to wipe away the blood that had trickled down from his nose due to the incredible mental strain of prying the reinforced vault door open.

Adam headed for the entrance of warped steel, but was stopped dead in his tracks when Hiro appeared to block the way. "I must stop you, Kensei," the time traveler declared. Monroe unsheathed his katana, prepared to do away with his former friend if it were necessary for reaching his objective. Hiro began to charge in for the attack when Peter once again dutifully exercised his telekinesis, flinging the Japanese man against the wall with a wave of his hand where he was struck a heavy blow.

Adam, watching Nakamura slide to the floor with a dull thud, incapacitated, replaced his sword. He took to walking towards the vault, pausing within the entry way to turn back towards his companion. "He's going to keep at it, Peter. Unless you do something about it." The implied threat of those words sunk regretfully deep into the Petrelli. With the fate of the world in his hands he had to do what was right however unsavory the act would be. Millions of lives at stake outweighed the one.

Peter lifted Hiro from his slouched position at the wall until his feet dangled in the air and tightened the grip of his invisible bonds to crushing proportions. Monroe smiled vindictively to himself out of Peter's view within the vault as he listened to his one time betrayer's strangled cry of pain.

_It's almost disappointing how easy that was, _he thought as he surveyed the rows of individually locked casings. All of the Company's greatest secrets and most dangerous relics were within reach, but he only had eyes for one. A slim glass vial containing a substance appearing much like dirty water with a purple stopper was being gingerly held aloft on a stand. _Hello, salvation. _Adam retrieved a small gold chain of rings from the inside pocket of his jacket, stopping to release the catch so that he could pull a specific ring away from the rest.

His collection of wedding bands from all of his marriages had been the only possession that he was allowed to keep during his imprisonment at Primatech; mostly due to spending every moment of his first two weeks within confinement madly howling about needing them. Eventually everyone in earshot had been irritated and fatigued enough by the incessant screams to grant him that one wish in exchange for a solemn promise that he would keep quiet from then on. Ten rings for ten wives. Unfortunately, what had escaped his captors' attentions was the fact that only nine of them truly belonged there. The Company had arrested him during the course of his last marriage so that he hadn't been around to retrieve his final wife's wedding band. He hadn't even been allowed to tell her good-bye. Bitter memories further fueled his poisonous intentions.

From the selection of jewelry Adam passed over the nine golden rings for a peculiarly designed silver one. Monroe replaced his ring collection with care before bending the silver around so that it no longer resembled a piece of jewelry so much as a small ornate key. A key that he had lifted from the pocket of one very romantically flustered Victoria Pratt some thirty years before. _Shame I had to kill her. She was a lovely woman once. _

He hadn't gotten quite so close to the completed 138 virus before and Adam could only hope that no one at the Company had thought to change the locks since the 1970's. The key slid into the appropriate case's lock without a hitch, and with a deep a breath he turned it over. Miniature tumblers rolled over one another until the glass lid popped free with a tiny squeak of disuse. Adam released the breath that he had been holding and gave a Cheshire grin to nothing in particular, snatching the vial from its stand and closing the lid again. His eyes drifted back over the rest of the casings until they landed on a blinking red light behind the grate of a ventilation shaft.

"Looks like I win after all," he gloated, waving the vial of Shanti virus between his fingers for the camera to see. Monroe had known that something like the Company vault would never be left so unprotected. The second that the case holding the virus had been opened pressure sensors had sent signals throughout the building triggering a silent alarm that would page every last one of their agents around the world. Too bad that they would be too late.

* * *

><p>"It's done." Noah glanced over at Bob Bishop who had been waiting for him to step back out of the Costa Verde house with news that Claire would no longer be out to expose the Company. Bennet knew that it would only be a matter of time before the deal that he had struck for the lives of his family would run out, but anything that could give them a head start was well worth the sacrifice.<p>

"Good," Bishop remarked in his typically unattached tone that always felt like a pitiful cover for a sneer. "Now with Claire out of the way we have some more business to attend to." The two men began a nonchalant walk towards the Company car housing two field agents for Bob's protection should the disguise of their hostility towards one another fall. "I think that Mohinder Suresh -" Bob was interrupted by the sharp bleating of a pager. At the same time the pagers of the two awaiting agents in the car and Bennet's old spare lurking inside of a box in the house began to sound an alarm.

Claire jumped a little at the high-pitched beeping that had disturbed her state of shock at seeing her father alive again and willingly falling back into the hands of the Company. Her mother and Lyle had wandered to other parts of the house, dealing with their own turmoil by suppression and denial so that she was left alone in the room. She curiously followed the irritating noise to one of the Primatech boxes that she had been packing away in preparation for taking them on with the media. Flipping the cardboard top off, Claire pawed at the stacks of files inside until she uncovered an old and somewhat abused looking pager that had been partially melted on one side.

Bishop sighed in annoyance and pulled out the device to check the code with a weary roll of his eyes. "That can't be right," he grumbled under his breath. Bob pulled off his glasses and held the display closer to his face to squint at. "No. That's impossible."

There was a trace of panic in the other man's voice that caught Noah's attention, and if that hadn't the sight of the two agents climbing out of the car with confused expressions on their faces did. Bennet snatched the pager out of Bob's hand to read the warning. "Code Black - SV138." They exchanged a look of intense worry. "No…"

"It's Adam," Bob declared. "It has to be." Noah ran back to his house, dashing through the door to warn his family. "Agent Anderson, call in a helicopter now," he directed, immediately shifting back into the monotone authoritarian. "Tell them that Midas needs an emergency evac - ten minutes ago!" Anderson quickly nodded and whipped out his cell phone while his partner eagerly awaited orders. "Agent Michels, get to New York. Find Dr. Suresh and get him to Odessa." The young agent nodded a head of curly red hair before turning into a blurred streak of color that sped off into the distance. "God help us all," he whispered to himself, digging out his own phone and punching the speed-dial for Elle.

* * *

><p>Angela Petrelli found herself wandering through the deserted streets of New York City. Cars were haphazardly vacated, left behind in the jumbled mess of traffic jams that they had been parked in. Store fronts with shattered windows were vacant, and paper fliers boasting notice of an emergency evacuation blew listlessly along the pavement on the breeze. There wasn't a single soul to be found, person, pigeon, or otherwise.<p>

"Hello?" she called out to the empty monuments of man. Only the pitiless reverberation of her own voice would answer her though.

"Adam!" Angela cried out, sure that the immortal would be lurking somewhere in the shadows. "Claire!" A flicker of movement was seen from the very edge of her peripheral vision and she whirled around expecting to see some form of life. She could almost physically feel the devastation when her hopes were dashed in favor of more discarded garbage. "Peter?"

The tear remained in the process of rolling down the slope of her gracefully aged cheek when she opened her eyes to see that she was still resting safely in the back seat of her car. Bustling people of all varieties flowed down the walkways and crossed the streets in the cacophony of noise that seemed a joyous if not chaotic sign of thriving life. She might have jumped clean out of her skin when the pager in her purse gave its piercing beep if she hadn't been expecting it. Angela filtered through her possessions until she could find the device. _Code Black - SV138_.

"My God, what have we done?" she whispered to herself. "There's been a change of plans," Angela directed her driver who glanced back at her from the rearview mirror. "Get me to JFK immediately. And whatever you do, don't stop this car for anything."

* * *

><p>"If you hadn't arrived Sylar would have slaughtered us all. We owe you our lives."<p>

"Really?" Mohinder gave her a short nod to convey his gratitude. "Cool." The role of hero was an entirely foreign concept to her, but the emotional reward felt… strangely encouraging.

Elle Bishop leaned casually against the doorframe leading to the back exit for the loft, careful to avoid the broken splinters of glass from where her electric shock had caused Sylar to fall through the pane during his escape. She had just lifted her cell phone to make the call about him when her pager sounded and everyone jumped at the slight noise. "Code Black - SV138" she read off. "Crap."

"SV138?" Mohinder perked up. "The Shanti virus? What about it?"

"If it's a 'Code Black' that means that somebody got into the vault at Primatech. I don't know who would be stupid enough to try _that_ though," she said with an awkward smile for such a ridiculous notion. And then the memory of an all too familiar charge that she had been assigned to watch over within the upper floors of the prison ward came rushing back at her. "Oh…"

"The Company has been keeping another strain of the virus in a vault?" Mohinder shook his head to clear away muddled thoughts. "When are you people going to learn?" He might have gone on longer if the trilling of her cell phone hadn't interrupted.

"Elle."

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Did you get the code?"

"Uh, huh."

"Then what are you still doing in New York?" Bob demanded.

"Daddy, I just got it like a minute ago."

"That is a minute that you could have spent calling for transport. You should know better, Elle."

"Daddy -"

"I'm leaving now for Ellesmere Island. I want you to report directly to Primatech. Those prisoners cannot escape."

"Primatech? But that's _ground zero_ now."

"Yes it is. All the more reason to get this situation taken care of. We can't let the Company be exposed in any of this. I'm willing to overlook your recent _errors_ in judgment if you can do your part to cover this up without any more mistakes."

"Yes, Sir," Elle replied rather deflatedly. The line promptly disconnected and she closed her cell. Three pairs of expectant eyes peered back at her.

Mohinder was the first one to pipe up. "How bad is this 138 strain?" he asked softly, having picked up on the heavy tension but not wanting to alarm the others.

"Bad," was all she could say.

* * *

><p>"Sandra! Lyle! Claire!" Bennet called out as he sprinted for the kitchen. He flung aside the doors of the pantry closet and began tossing boxes out of the way in a hurried search for his secret stash.<p>

"Dad? What is this?" Claire asked, holding out the pager with wide eyes for her normally controlled father's frenzy. "What's going on?"

"Noah?" Sandra called out also filing into the kitchen to see what was happening.

"Sandra, get Lyle and pack your bags. Take only what you absolutely have to. I'm giving you five minutes and then we have to get as far away from here as possible." His wife opened her mouth to protest but Bennet stopped his task long enough to wave her off. "I'll tell you everything when we're on the road, but right now we have to hurry."

"Dad, what's a 'Code Black' for 'SV138'?"

"Claire get your bag packed," Noah grunted as he frantically dug into his hiding spot and began to chuck all manner of weaponry and emergency aid kits over his shoulder.

"No!" she almost screamed at him in her already emotionally heightened state. "Tell me what is going on!"

Her father sank to his knees in the opening to the pantry and his shoulders dropped in defeat. Allowing confusion and panic to add to the situation would only cost them valuable time. "It's the Shanti virus."

"What? Like what Molly had?"

"Yes and no. It's the same virus but a different strain. Number 138."

"Why do we all to have leave? Doesn't it just affect people like me?"

Noah bit his tongue for a moment trying to think of a way to explain the problem with the virus to her that wouldn't make her concerns worse. "It will at first. But people that don't have abilities can also carry the virus helping it spread, and 138 mutates very quickly. It's only a matter of time until it starts to infect everyone else."

"And kills them…" Claire finished the thought, feeling her heart sink.

"Yes." Bennet gathered up his personal gun arsenal into a spare canvas bag holding a collection of false identities and a few bundles of cash. "The Company was keeping 138 protected in a secured vault at Primatech back in Odessa. They have contingency plans in place in case it ever got out," he rushed, shoving the stack of medical kits into her arms, "but it's probably already too late."

Claire helped him carry the supplies out into the driveway to the car where she noticed Bishop and a strange man both yelling fanatically into cell phones by a sleek black car. "Okay, but if it was supposed to be safe in this vault who could have gotten it?"

"They think it's Adam Monroe."

Bennet threw the bags into the trunk of the family car before taking the kits from Claire. He popped the latch on one to reveal a selection of loaded syringes resting within foamy insulation. "Who's Adam?" she asked, watching her father take one of the needles full of clear liquid and roll his sleeve up to thump on a vein in his arm.

"He's a 'special' like you." With the vein exposed Noah carefully tipped the needle into the blood vessel and pressed in on the plunger.

"What's his ability?"

"Claire," he stopped to take in the revolving emotions that flooded her features. Confusion, frustration, grief, and disgust for what she had just seen him do all stared back at him. "He's like you. _Exactly_ like you."

"There's others?" Everything else fell away to surprise, and maybe just a little relief.

"Just the one that I know of," he grunted, grabbing two more syringes and closing the case again. Claire's mind had already been spinning before her father had come back home. All of the revelations that had followed in the last hour only served to lock her down in a haze of whirling possibilities. She tried to hold on to the thought that a deadly virus was set to spread over the world, but the only thing her brain seemed to want to cling to out of that was that it was because of another person just like her. For so long she had held in anxious feelings about being the only freak that could do what she could, and fears of loneliness because of it, keeping them all secret from the people around her lest they think less of her or begin to come to the same conclusions. And then, out of the blue, there was suddenly someone else that could potentially understand in a way that no one else would. He could answer so many questions.

"Why didn't you tell me about him before?"

Noah grabbed a pistol out of the bag, dropped the magazine to check that it was loaded, and handed it to her before slamming the trunk shut. "Claire," he warned, feeling her anger rise. "Adam might have the same ability, but he's nothing like you. He's - he's dangerous. He's kills people. Like _Sylar_," he added knowing that the name association would instantly grab her attention.

"Claire?" Sandra Bennet and Lyle stepped out of the house to see her holding a gun and Noah with two needles in his hand while Bob and the agent continued to bicker at the bottom of the drive. "Noah? _What the hell_ is going on? You've been keeping guns in the house?"

He didn't give her time to exert the full capacity of her wrath. Bennet dashed to take his family's bags and tossed them into the back seat of the car before returning and taking his wife's arm. "Noah!" she shrieked at him when he ripped the sleeve of her blouse upward to inject her with the same clear substance that he had given himself. "What is this?"

"It's a vaccine for the Spanish Flu." Lyle gave a startled gasp when his turn came for a dosage. "It won't stop the virus, but it might slow it down. We hope."

"Virus?"

"Why doesn't Claire get one?" Lyle inquired, looking back and forth between all of them as he struggled to figure out what was happening to them.

"Her regeneration would burn it up in her system before it could do anything."

"That's right," Bob interjected, gaining everyone's attention as he sidled up to the family. "Not that it matters. I imagine you have a natural immunity against the virus which is why we'll be needing your services."

Noah lunged for the gun Claire was holding and trained the business end on the space directly between Bishop's eyes. Agent Anderson dropped his phone to bring his own firearm into play, aiming for Bennet. Bob also dropped his Company issued weapon from its holster beneath his jacket but left the threat to dangle easily at his side. "You're not taking my daughter," Bennet warned.

Bishop casually watched Sandra gather Lyle behind her back and pull Claire into her side, never for a second losing focus on what was happening before them. "We've seen how the combination of Mohinder Suresh's and Claire's blood can form a cure for the virus." Bob's eyes left Noah's to stare openly at Claire who struggled against her mother's grasp to shield them with her own body. "You can help to save a lot of lives, young lady."

"Don't talk to her," Noah warned again, cocking his pistol.

"You can't die from the virus. Your ability keeps you from even being infected by it so that you can't spread it to others. If you come with us we will do everything in our power to keep you safe from harm. You're a very valuable person to us right now, Claire. I'll treat you as if you were my own daughter."

"Don't listen to him, Claire," her father growled.

"How would you feel if people like Nathan Petrelli and Meredith Gordon had to die because of a virus that you could prevent? People like West Rosen, or even your Uncle Peter?"

"How did you -"

"We know everything, Claire." Bob gave her a plastic smile that didn't touch his eyes at all. "The Company can protect your family. We can arrange for safe passage for everyone. All you have to do is come with us."

"Dad, put the gun down."

"Claire, no. I'm not letting them take you. You could disappear down a rabbit hole and never be seen again."

"As soon as this is all over you'll be safely reunited with your family," Bob placated. "As a gesture of good faith," he put his gun away and pulled a business card from the inner pocket of his jacket, holding it out for someone to take, "there's a Company quarantine station in Quebec. It's a clean zone. Your family can stay there for as long as you need to, and all of your needs will be met."

Claire squirmed out from under her mother's arm to cautiously approach Bishop and take the card from his outstretched hand. "That's a secured line," he indicated the phone number printed on the card. "Only the top Company personnel have access to that number. If you call them and tell them that Midas sent you everything will be taken care of."

"Claire?" Her father turned to look at her with a plea in his eyes, perfectly aware of just how much sense the other man's words would be making to her.

"Time _is_ an issue here," Bob noted, tapping on his watch face. "If the virus is released we'll only have a twenty-four hour window to contain it."

"Dad, put the gun down," she reiterated. Claire moved to his side and placed her hand over her father's trembling ones. "He's right. If I can do anything to stop this… I _have_ to." Bennet lowered his weapon and pulled her into a tight hug. "I'll be safe. I promise." She pulled back from her father to look him in the eyes. "You have to get Mom and Lyle out of here." Noah glanced back at his wife and son and nodded in agreement.

"Don't trust anything they tell you," Sandra whispered into her ear when Claire went to give her mother a farewell hug. "_Nothing_."

"I won't," she promised.

"Don't… Don't die or anything," her brother mumbled worriedly when she wrapped her arms around him too.

"If anything happens to her…" Noah shared a look with Bishop that easily communicated his threatening intentions.

"If anything happens to her we may already be dead."

* * *

><p><em>Let Hiro go. Go after Adam. He's using you, Peter. Let Hiro go. <em>The time traveler slipped back down the wall of the hallway as Peter released his telekinetic grip under the influence of Matt Parkman's thoughts. _Go after Adam. He's evil._

_I don't think so, _Peter pushed back, turning to fully face his new foe.

_He wants to destroy the whole world._

_You're wrong. Adam wouldn't do that._

_He's going to release the virus, _Matt pushed again.

_He wants to destroy the virus. _With a casual wave of his hand, Peter knocked Parkman onto his backside and sent him sliding down the hall away from the vault. "Don't you understand? You're on the wrong side!"

"What about me, Pete?" Nathan asked, stepping out from a side hall to address his brother.

"Nathan?" It was the first time that Peter had seen him since he had lain in a hospital bed broken, burnt, and barely alive after the night at Kirby Plaza when he had flown them away from the city saving millions of lives from Peter's explosion. Adam had seemed so sure that an infusion of his regenerative blood would help to save the Petrelli, but Peter had never imagined that Nathan would be able to walk away unscathed. Surprised eyes took in the full scope of his brother's face failing to find any trace of flaw.

"Am I on the wrong side too?"

"If you're trying to stop me from destroying that virus… Yes." Peter tensed his stance again, ready to protect the world; even from his brother if he had to.

While the others held Peter distracted, Hiro came out of his daze on the floor. Realizing that Monroe had been temporarily forgotten inside of the vault with the virus, he blinked, teleporting back to his nemesis.

_Now, where's that key… Ah, yes. There you are._ Adam smirked as he spied his secondary goal in another glass case on a top shelf. A large golden key hung on its stand just waiting to be obtained. Balancing on the tips of his toes he stretched forward to twist Victoria's key into the lock so that he could take the object into his possession as well.

"Kensei," Hiro called out, interrupting the acquisition. "You were my friend," he lapsed back into Japanese.

"You were more than a friend to me." Monroe felt a brief moment of pleasant surprise that he could still remember the language after not having spoken it in over two hundred years. "You were my inspiration. I was a rudderless drunk, and then you came along and taught me to be a hero."

"Only to have you become a villain."

Adam unleashed his sword, bringing the point to rest just before Hiro's throat. "I learned that from you," he venomously replied also using the teleporter's native tongue. In the hand resting covertly behind his back from view, Adam held the vial of Shanti virus, working the rubber stopper out with his thumb.

"I went to the Company. I saw Adam's history," Nathan began to explain. "Who he is, and what he wanted. Pete, he _tried_ to release the virus."

"Do you want to know how your burns got healed, Nathan? He gave you his blood. I was there. You should be grateful."

"He used me," the older Petrelli brother whispered, realizing just how far the man in question had twisted Peter's mind.

"I've been living in this wretched world for over four hundred years now, Hiro," Adam went on. "I've seen everything there is to see now. The good. The bad. The hopeless. I've traveled to the ends of the Earth, and lived a hundred different lives with a hundred different peoples. And do you know what I've learned?" He leant forward slightly so that he could look his enemy directly in the eyes. "_They're all the same_. It doesn't matter where you come from, or what you believe in. People are always the same. They live, they fight amongst one another, and they die."

"And you think that gives you right to destroy them all?" Hiro glared back at him unblinking.

"I didn't start out with that idea," Adam pulled back. "There was a time when I thought they could be saved. I brought this Company together with the idea that we could use our abilities to end the struggle and the pain. I shared my knowledge. I worked alongside these people for over ten years to save lives only to be betrayed by them in the end. But it didn't matter what we did.

"War. Famine. Disease. Four hundred years later and nothing has changed. When God wasn't happy with what he created he made it rain for forty days and forty nights. He just washed it all away. And he had the right idea. Because when this virus is released those of us who will be left will be granted a second chance. And I'll be there, Hiro."

"He used _me_ to get to you," Nathan stated as he slowly approached his brother. "Don't you see it? That he tried to manipulate you like that?"

"Nathan, he -"

"Peter, that night at Kirby Plaza when I carried you away, it was because I believe in you. You're my brother, Pete. I love you." Peter dropped his guard with the genuine truth that he could feel in his brother's words. "Can you _really_ trust Adam?" He turned back to the vault with a pang of dread in his gut.

* * *

><p>"Mo, I don't want to get sick again," Molly mumbled with unshed tears of fear in her eyes.<p>

Mohinder looked back at a fretful Elle for a moment but summoned the most serene smile possible for his young charge. "Don't you worry. I won't let anything bad happen to you. We'll find a way to stop all this just like we always do."

"Promise?"

"I promise." Maya caught his anxious eyes with her own worried ones. She was about to say something when the front door to the loft slammed open with a gush of air. Elle had a charge built in her hand to ward off the new invader in an instant and shot a long arch of bright blue lightning in the direction of the entrance. A blurred streak of black and red sped out of the line of fire, coming to a breezy halt at Suresh's side.

"Are you Mohinder Suresh?" the agent quirked her head at him with open curiosity. Her neatly pressed black pant suit and loosely curled mop of vibrant red hair were barely ruffled by the supersonic speed she was capable of traveling at.

"Yes," he answered hesitantly.

"Who are you?" Elle demanded as she crossed to his side as well.

"Agent Gloria Michels. I have explicit instructions to bring you to Odessa, Texas, Dr. Suresh."

"Who's orders?"

Michels barely paused to give Elle the time of day. "Mr. Robert Bishop. There's been a mishap at the Primatech facility and we require your assistance."

"Mohinder…" Maya and Molly were looking back and forth between them all in panic. After discovering the death of her brother, a betrayal by Gabriel, and then a gunshot wound her nerves were already on edge. Being forced to wait in confusion while the neurotic blonde with static dancing on her fingertips faced off with a gun-toting red haired woman that moved too quickly to see was not doing Maya's sense of calm any favors.

Blackness flooded into her eyes and she could feel the cool misty sensation come over her skin whenever the shroud of death that she wielded seeped out into the world. An inky tear slipped over Molly's lashes as her breathing labored, and Mohinder hunched over in a tight spasm of pain. Elle's electricity faltered in her hand, but began to spread over skin, ionizing the air of the room and gaining intensity for a defensive power surge. Gloria rippled with a full body shiver and whipped out both of her Company issue pistols, training one on Elle, and the other on Maya.

"Dr. Suresh…" Michels called out when she saw him drop to his knees.

"Maya… Please. You have to make it stop."

She took a deep cleansing breath, willing herself to pull the misty feeling back inside. The black hue faded from all of their eyes and bodily function slowly returned to normal. Elle turned around and heaved a stream of electrical discharge to rid herself of the energy that had built up.

"That was… interesting." Michels returned her guns to their holsters after the blonde's angry crackling had ceased. "As I was saying, Dr. Suresh, we have to get going. _Now_."

"Mo, don't leave me here," Molly cried out when the agent made to grab her caretaker's arm for travel. "What about Sylar?"

"Sylar?" Gloria perked up. "Sylar is _here_?"

"He was. I lost him," Elle grumbled.

Michels instantly retrieved her dual pistols again and held them at the ready, vigilantly studying every nook and cranny of the room as if she expected the monster to pop out at her any moment. "Did he have his abilities?"

"He didn't earlier. But he took the blood so he's probably getting them back as we speak." Mohinder spared another disgruntled glance for the space where his case should have been. "Oh, God, Nikki."

"We're getting out of here, Dr. Suresh." Gloria continued to slowly circle about as she moved towards him keeping an eye out for the ability hunter.

"I can't. I have to get more of the blood for Nikki Sanders, and Molly…" he let his arms fly in frustration.

"That wasn't an option, Dr. Suresh."

* * *

><p>Neighbors curiously gathered outside of their homes and out over the lush green lawns to watch the Company helicopter make an impromptu landing on the street corner. "Agent Anderson will be escorting you back to Odessa," Bob indicated the agent leaning against the car. The tall man with dark sandy blonde hair and wide brown eyes gave her an uneasy smile from his post.<p>

"You're not coming with us?" Claire faced a lightly sweating Bishop again.

"No. I'll be meeting with the other founders at another location."

"As far from harm's reach as possible," Noah snorted.

Bob might have wanted to argue, but instead he took another look at his watch and waved them off. Bennet rested a warm hand on his daughter's shoulder while they watched him duck under the wind of the chopper's blades and climb inside. When the aerial transport lifted off Noah pressed his pistol in her hand and closed her fingers around it.

"When things like this happen people start to panic, Claire Bear. Don't go anywhere alone or without this." Next he handed her a spare cell phone with his number already programmed into it. "If anything, _anything_, goes wrong or gets to be too much for you to handle, you call me."

"I will. Take care of Mom and Lyle."

"I will." Claire followed him to the car where Sandra and her brother were already sullenly strapped in. She leaned in to kiss her mother good-bye with promises that they would be back together again before they knew it. "We _will_ see you again soon," Noah vowed. Claire simply nodded because if she had said anything in that moment it might have only come out as a choked sob and she had to be a brave face for her family.

Anderson patiently waited for her to watch them drive away before he approached. "We, um, we should get going now," he motioned to black Company car. She nodded in agreement and quietly made to take the passenger's seat.

* * *

><p>"One way or another I'm taking you, Dr. Suresh."<p>

"What about me?"

"What _about_ you?" Gloria asked in irritation.

"I have orders to get to Primatech too," Elle huffed.

"I was only instructed to get the good doctor."

"Of course you were," she sighed despondently.

"Look, we have a world to save, and a killer on the loose. I don't have time to keep arguing with you over this."

"Mohinder, I - I can take her," Maya started, gesturing towards the sniffling girl.

"What are you going to do if Sylar comes back?"

"I stopped him before. I can do it again," she answered confidently.

His hands were tied. Mohinder made to pinch the bridge of his nose out of habit only to flinch at the forgotten pain that resided there from the break. "Molly, do you think you can go with Maya?"

She paused to think about the situation, looking back and forth between them and agreed. "I can track Sylar. If he comes for us I'll know and we can run away."

"Alright, um…" He stopped to search for a piece of scrap in the pile of papers on his desk. Grabbing a pen, Suresh quickly scrawled out a list of information for the girls to take. "This is the address for my mother's house in India and directions on how to get there." He pulled out his wallet and handed Maya all of the cash that he had on hand and a barely used credit card for emergencies. As an afterthought he also gave her his phone. "Take this. Get as far away as you can. I'll call you as soon as I can and tell you anything I find out."

Upon exiting the loft Mohinder refused to leave with the agent until he saw that Maya and Molly had found a cab to the airport. "Everything will be alright," he promised the little girl with a kiss on the forehead. "I'll find a way to make everything good again. I promise."

Sylar kept his back to the outer wall of the loft, peering out from the corner of the alleyway at the group of people leaving. Suresh was preoccupied with saying good-bye to the young tracker and Maya while Elle and what seemed to be another Company agent chatted tensely.

"I am _not_ a car," the redhead grumbled, crossing her arms. "Call for a transport like everyone else."

"Whatever," Elle pouted. "I guess I'll see you all back at Primatech."

He silently waited them out, watching as the women all got into cabs. The agent joined his side when Mohinder sullenly jammed his hands into his pockets, gazing after the cars. "My partner just phoned in. Claire Bennet will be joining us in Odessa within a few hours."

Sylar couldn't help but allow the smirk to curl in the corner of his mouth. His fingers flexed within his fist, knuckles popping a touch, and reminding him of just how much he had been craving that delicious ability. His own powers were slowly returning to him, but so far only the telekinesis and his natural aptitude had made a full comeback. Hopes flared that with another injection of the cheerleader's blood, or even adaptation of the regenerative ability itself would bring them all back. Invulnerability. It was such a perfect little thing to have in one's pocket; appropriate for all occasions. Had his mouth not been quite so dry he might have salivated a bit for the want of it. _Thanks for telling me where she'll be._

* * *

><p>"You are not God," Hiro contemptuously contested.<p>

"Really? I've lived for over four hundred years. Who's to say that I'm not going to live four hundred more?" Adam leaned farther in until he was within arm's reach.

"I should have killed you. Long ago. And I should kill you now. For my father." The rubber stopper came free from the vial and Adam tilted it a touch so that a few drops of the liquid inside could be smeared over his thumb. When Hiro grabbed him for teleportation, he was ready.

All the world had gone terribly silent in the moment that Peter was sprinting for the vault door. His own heavy hitting pulse was the only sound to reach his ears. He charged through the entryway of warped steel and twisted locking mechanisms just in time to catch sight of the virus's vial falling out of thin air. In a sharp stab of panic he reached out with his telekinesis to snare the glass before it could shatter over the floor releasing the deadly plague… only to be a fraction of a second too late.

The vial's rubber stopper had been loosened to allow a few drops of the liquid incarnation of the virus to splash on the cement floor which interrupted his attention enough for the rest of the vial to slip through his invisible fingers. Glass splinters spread outward from the impact of the fall farther smearing the contaminate.

Nathan and Matt whom had been chasing after him bumped into Peter's back after his abrupt stop. "Oh no…"

"Get out! Get out of here!" Peter used his ability to blow the other men back from the vault and away from the virus. He ran out after them and proceeded to do his very best to shove the door back into place, straining with all of his might to close off the threat. Summoning Ted Sprague's ability, he did what he could to weld the metal contraption back into place for an airtight seal.

* * *

><p>"Let me out! Let me out of here! Carp!" Hiro wearily tossed his shovel aside and slumped to his knees near the pile of fresh dirt for the grave that he had dug. "Carp! Let me out of here!" Adam's panicked cries for release from his makeshift prison carried through the earth to him. He pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose successfully smearing a streak of dirt across his face in the process. Nakamura was just about ready to teleport home when one last shriek from the buried man caught his attention.<p>

"You'll never find the cure without me, Carp!"

**To be continued...**


	3. Pandora's Box

**2**

**Pandora's Box**

* * *

><p><em>March 20, 2007<em>

Peter stumbled backward from his work on the vault door and wiped away the sheen of perspiration coating his brow. If getting the door open in the first place had been a strain to his mental faculties, attempting to shove the mangled wreckage back together didn't even begin to compare. He had never felt so thoroughly drained in all of his life. Not even the explosion over Kirby Plaza had taken as much energy from him.

"Pete?" Nathan approached just in time to lend his brother aid before he toppled over. He slipped Peter's arm around his shoulder and slouched a bit to help him remain steady on his feet.

"Did I get it shut?"

The older Petrelli looked back at the warped contortion of reinforced steel, bent and molded back into place in a crude but seemingly effective weld. Swaths of charred paint and partially liquefied drywall emanated outward in blackish sooty streaks from the metal that had yet to cool. "Yeah. You got it shut," he coughed in the acrid, burnt air.

"I saw it, Nathan. I saw what that virus could do in the future. I can't believe I almost…"

"It's okay, Pete. It didn't get out. Everything's going to be alright." Matt shook a bewildered head at him, knowing that what he was really thinking differed greatly from the gentle assurances that he lent his brother. It was just too close to call. They shared a look of silent communication to which Parkman didn't need his ability to know that it was best for the situation to keep his mouth shut. Peter was far too exhausted to use his own telepathy and if he got the idea that he somehow hadn't done enough already he would seriously hurt himself trying more.

Matt helped them out by supporting Peter's other shoulder. "So what's next?"

"We tell everybody not to open that door again."

* * *

><p>"So," Agent Anderson smiled from the driver's seat of the car, drumming his fingers nervously on the wheel. "Are you, uh, hungry? Thirsty? Need to use a bathroom?"<p>

Claire didn't bother to dignify the man with an answer. Instead she continued to watch the world pass by with her forehead pressed against the window. They had been on the road for a little over an hour without a word between them and her semi-catatonic state was obviously beginning to worry him. She couldn't seem to find it in herself to care though. Her mind was already bogged down by far more important matters so that the stranger entrusted to her safekeeping didn't even begin to register.

Her father was alive. Claire had watched Noah fall to the ground as a lifeless heap after being murdered by Mohinder Suresh and suffered through the inability to help him as West carried her away. But suddenly, miraculously, he was back thanks to her blood and hopefully escorting the rest of their family to safety while she was on her way to play the part of a heroic guinea pig.

She may have only been seventeen, but she wasn't an idiot. Claire knew enough about the Company and the people responsible for running it to know that she couldn't trust Bob Bishop, or anything that he had said to her. She knew that she was walking right into the rabbit hole her father had feared for her, but what other choice was there? If she hadn't come willingly the Company would have taken her by force which probably would have lead to her father's death, _again_, if not her whole family. At least by agreeing to their terms the people that she loved had a chance to get away. Maybe someday she would even get to see them again. After helping to save the world of course. No pressure or anything.

And the one person in all the world that was like her, who could understand, and maybe help her get to know who she was supposed to be was to blame. What was it that could have possibly made him want to do such a thing as release a virus that he must have known to have devastatingly deadly properties? What had happened to Adam that made him hurt people so badly? When Claire had first discovered their apparently shared ability, she had used the power to help save a man's life from a fire. Perhaps she wasn't always out to save the world, but she was a far cry from ever wanting to end it. Was that something that she had to look forward to? Or were they truly as different as they were seemingly alike?

"Not hungry," she finally replied in a disimpassioned mumble. Claire watched a billboard fly by the window announcing the last place to stop for such amenities in the next eighty miles and leaned over to crank up the volume on the radio, not even hearing what was playing but hoping that the agent would take the hint.

Anderson's shoulders slumped with a sigh and he pulled off onto the exit ramp anyways. A few minutes later found them parking in the lot of a small fast food diner. He jumped out of the car and crossed over to her side, jerking the door open abruptly and nearly causing her to choke on her seat belt tumbling out. When she crossed her arms and glared at him contemptuously instead of following along as he expected, Anderson leaned over to unhook the seat belt and made to carry her over his shoulder if need be. "Alright!"

Claire had to take two steps for every one of his to keep up, the hand he held clamped to her arm not permitting otherwise. Inside Anderson gave the girl behind the register an easy smile before glossing over the menu. "What do you want?"

"To scream."

He slung an arm around her shoulders to pull her even more tightly into his side if it were possible and leaned down to speak to her so that no one else would hear their conversation. "That would be a _very_ bad idea, Claire. You wouldn't want anybody to get hurt, would you?"

"_You're_ hurting _me_." Anderson looked down at the grip he kept on her arm. Noticing the bright red markings coloring the area around his fingers, he let go. The evidence vanished almost instantly but he didn't replace the hand. Sensing an opportunity, Claire balanced on her toes until they were eye to eye and in her most petulant tone announced, "I have to pee."

He rolled his eyes but cleared the way for her to use the restroom. She half expected him to try to follow her into the lady's room but was relieved by the sight of him posting himself just outside the door. "I'll be right here," he promised as if she would need the assurance or his assistance. Claire twisted the knob on the sink's faucet so that running water would help to muffle the sounds she made and slammed the stall door. The window was a few feet higher than she expected for an escape though forcing her to perch precariously on the sink counter, leaning over the space to push the pane upward and open. After an awkward leap Claire managed to grapple onto the edge of the window and scramble up the wall until she fell through to the other side landing directly in a hedge.

Low chuckling caught her attention as she clambered out from the spiny bushes. Agent Anderson stood a few feet away waiting for her. "I wouldn't expect anything less from Bennet's daughter," he laughed. Claire came to her feet in a huff and he helped her brush the dirt off and picked a twig out of her hair. "Is a little trust too much to ask for?"

"Trust?" Claire hissed at him. "An hour ago you were pointing a gun at my father's head in front of my family! And you want me to _trust _you?"

"Bennet wasn't my assignment. You are." She crossed her arms defiantly, clearly not buying anything he had to sell. Anderson jammed his hands into his pockets and let the agent act fall. "Look, I'm not even going to pretend to know everything that's going on right now. You probably know more about this situation than I do. But I do know that without you _a lot _of people are going to die. _Including_ you're family. _My_ family. We need you, and I'm not going to let _anything_ happen to you.

"And for what it matters, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to do my job; which today means saving the world. No pressure or anything." He shot her a sardonic grin. "Save the cheerleader. Save the world, right?" In that one shining moment she couldn't help but think of Peter. One stand-up guy in a crowd of thieves and liars just trying to do the right thing. To be a hero. Claire wasn't about to start trusting the man, but it was going to be hard to keep being a righteous pain in his ass.

Anderson seemed to sense her shift in attitude towards the possibility of giving him the benefit of a doubt and perked up a bit. "How about that cheeseburger?"

"Shouldn't we be in a hurry to get out of here?"

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't be doing a very good job of taking care of you if I didn't make sure you kept your energy up. Besides, who knows how long it'll be before we can eat again after we get there."

"Fine, but can we get it to go?"

He nodded and smiled in agreement. "Your wish is my command. And we can get you one of those little cups of ketchup so it at least looks like I tried to get a vegetable in there."

"Tomatoes are a fruit."

"Whatever. Just don't get it all over the car."

* * *

><p>Hiro couldn't just ignore him and go on as if he hadn't heard anything. There was a most distinct possibility that Adam was lying and that there was no "cure" to be found, or no reason to have to find one in the first place. He wanted out of his coffin prison and was liable to say anything to achieve that. But after having witnessed Adam come so close to releasing the virus…<p>

"That's right, Hiro," came the muffled voice from under the ground, sensing his nemesis give pause. Monroe fingered the white satin lining of his coffin, listening for any indication that the time traveler had changed his mind about leaving him there. "I had the vial in my hand. I dropped it when we teleported. If you don't believe me go into the future and see for yourself."

Nakamura climbed to his feet, pushing his glasses back onto his nose, and decided that it was his duty to indeed take a look for himself. If there were any cause to worry, it was best taken care of before the situation could escalate any farther than it already had. With a blink he came to stand just outside of the Primatech vault one year from when he had left. Shards of broken glass crunched beneath his shoes as he turned to see the twisted mass of metal locking mechanisms not only open once more, but completely unhinged and leaning partially through the wall which had crumbled under the weight. Hiro tugged his shirt up over his nose and mouth so as not to accidentally breathe anything harmful and held it there with his hand. Peeking inside of the vault room, he could see several of the casings layering the walls smashed open with their contents removed, and a small puddle of dark brown fluid had congealed in the center of the floor. _The virus._

"Hello?" Hiro stumbled through the darkened corridors leading to the upper floors of the building using the wall for a guide. He could hear the scattering of spent bullets and the crunch of debris under his feet as he moved along, and felt dimples in the wall along with deep gouges and occasionally smears of something crusty. "Yoo-hoo… Is anybody here?"

Somewhere around the third corner his foot caught on something solid and he went sprawling forward onto the floor. Hiro pulled himself up and twisted around to free his shoe from whatever it had gotten tangled up in. He groped about feeling cloth with a long, hard object leading towards the wall within it. The branch-like object connected to more of the mysterious structure leading up to a series of spaced branches joining in the center beneath more cloth, and then up a more solid rock like mass. A hinged rock with… teeth. Hiro jumped backward with a startled gasp when it dawned on him that he had been touching someone's still clothed skeleton left behind in the hall.

"So, sorry," he apologized to the corpse before climbing to his feet again. Hiro continued to hear crunching and rattling as he moved down the passageway doing his best not to think about exactly what it was he was stepping on in the darkness. At the end of another turn a dim spot of light caught his attention and he moved towards it, ignoring the arch of oxidized blood coating the glass of the door that it lay behind.

"Hello?" he called again. The room appeared to be a laboratory of some sort with racks of vials and scattered papers covering every available surface that wasn't housing medical equipment. A solitary computer continued to hum amidst the silence by the overhead lamp that was left shining. Another skeletal body hunched over the keyboard with its bony fingers remaining on the keys. Hiro was nearly resigned to hopelessness at the sight until the lamp light glinted off of a white sneaker beyond the desk.

Four bodies were huddled together there. One female and three males sharing a blanket for heat. They hadn't rotted away quite like the others so it seemed as though they were merely sleeping as a group. Hiro knelt down to gently rustle the woman's shoulder, but she wouldn't wake up. He rolled her over to see her face, moving aside a curtain of amber blonde hair and held his breath.

Claire's pain had been captured in death. Her features were skewed together in anguish, and a trail of rust brown blood cracked over her pale lips and down her chin. Peter Petrelli slouched over her form in the corner having tugged her body into his arms. Kensei lay at her side with his face turned into her and their fingers linked together. None other than the Brain Man was slumped on the other side, somewhat hesitantly resting next to the others.

He pulled away to reexamine the scene while blinking back a stinging tear. They were in mourning. It looked as though Claire had been the first to die and after that the others had simply… _stopped_. Given up.

Hiro couldn't bear to look at them any longer. With the pungent stench of death still clinging to his nose he teleported to the surface. Outside of Primatech the sun shone down with warm cheery rays for a cold scene. Black body bags were piled on top of one another over wooden pallets in unfathomable numbers. Forklifts to carry them away were left abandoned around the parking lot, and beyond them were lines of sandbag walls covered with barbed wiring. Shell casings were swept up and down the blood-stained sidelines of forgotten military equipment and sun bleached bones. When they hadn't been able to contain or cure the virus, they had started to murder everyone who could have been infected. Only they were already too late.

Nakamura dropped to his knees in the soft dirt, once again standing over Adam's designated plot within the burial grounds of his homeland, one year away from all of the devastation that he had witnessed. "What do you think now, Carp?" came the muffled voice.

"You know where there is a cure?"

Monroe grinned madly into the pitch-black of his coffin at the defeated resignation in his enemy's voice. To have brought the time traveler down so far must have meant an incredible success in his plans. "I'm the _only_ one who knows where it is. The only one still alive anyways."

"Tell me where the cure is."

"Let me out of here."

"Tell me where the cure is, and I will set you free."

"…Let me out first, and I'll tell you where the cure is."

Hiro rolled his eyes. Arguing with the man would get them nowhere fast, and _one_ of them wasn't getting any younger. With the power of the scrunchy face he froze time. Picking up his shovel, Hiro drew out a long sigh and set to digging.

What felt like hours later to the angry crick in his spine and the throbbing ache in his shoulders, Adam's coffin was unearthed once more. He unlocked the lid and allowed time to flow freely. Monroe took his precious time stretching out beyond the confinement of his casket before sitting up.

"Tell me where to find this cure," Hiro demanded irritably between haggard pants.

"I think I want my sword as well."

They exchanged equally stern gazes, neither relenting. "No one survives, Kensei," Hiro stated darkly, never losing eye contact with his nemesis. "The virus will kill everyone. Everything. Even you."

Adam narrowed his eyes skeptically for a moment before relaxing into cynical smirk. "You're lying."

"I have seen it. One year in the future you are gone."

Monroe laughed nonsensically as he climbed free of his coffin. "I've been alive for over four hundred years, Hiro. I've walked through mountains of the dead after plagues. I've seen epidemics come and go all over the world. This virus is no different than any of those, and I'll survive it too."

Nakamura's patience faltered. After the horrors he had witnessed in times yet to pass, and with the weight of the world's fate on his shoulders, he felt himself give in to the fleeting impulse for violence before consciously being able to stop it. A singular cruel thought for the destroyer of humanity lifted his sword against the man, pressing the blade to his throat. "You will spend your next four hundred years in your grave if you do not tell me where the cure is."

"Now, now, Hiro," Adam chided sarcastically. "That's not the way of the warrior, now is it?"

As alarming as it was to admit that Kensei was right, Hiro's grip on the leather-bound handle of the prized katana lessened, the end of the sword dropping from his neck to a glancing point at his chest. While the time traveler was distracted with internally reprimanding himself for degrading the path of the hero, Adam seized the opportunity to grab the blade. Blood ran from the wounds sliced deeply into the flesh of his hand from taking hold of the sharpened steel, but only for a moment before healing. The sword was jerked so that Hiro followed with it into his reach and Monroe forced a thumb to hook in his surprised mouth, scraping against the inner wall of a cheek, and then retracting. The same thumb that had been contaminated with a sample of the 138 virus.

Hiro pulled away, unaware of exactly what had just transpired, and wiped his hand across his mouth to remove a spot of drool that had escaped in the most unexpected attack. "That was gross," he muttered with a disgusted look on his face. Lacking another pause, Nakamura extended his hand to take possession of the fallen hero, and determined that what may be their only chance at finding a cure would not get away, blinked them out of space and time with the virus awakening in his veins.

* * *

><p>"We'll have to evacuate the building. Maybe the town," Nathan grunted as he shifted Peter's weight on his shoulder to relieve an already aching back from toting Parkman earlier that day. "Call in the C.D.C., the National Guard, anybody that'll listen. I'll get a press conference together, and we'll all tell everyone what happened here today."<p>

"My father, your parents, when are they going to learn?" Matt grumbled. "I am getting so tired of having to clean up their messes."

The trio were about to turn off into another corridor that would lead to the upper levels of the building with Peter's head bobbing in a worryingly slack position in the middle when a unit of Primatech agents heeding the vault alarm's call obstructed them. "Stop where you are!" a chorus of voices commanded with pistols drawn on their targets.

"Whoa! Whoa, take it easy," Nathan instructed, carefully raising his free hand to show the agents that he wasn't armed.

"Where is the virus?"

"Still in the vault. We, uh," he glanced down at his dangerously exhausted brother, "we think we stopped it from getting out. But whatever you do, _don't_ open it again."

"Were any of you infected?" An older man that they assumed to be the leader of the squad pulled up a paper facemask that had been hanging about his neck and fitted it cover his face. He took the time to squeeze into a pair of rubber gloves as well while the rest of the group copied the procedure.

"No. No, I don't think so."

A barely audible _pop_ registered in the air as Hiro Nakamura reappeared on the scene with Adam Monroe in tow. Guns were drawn again on the new visitors with renewed vigor. "Flying Man?" Hiro uttered nervously at the sight of so many muzzles staring him down.

"Stay where you are!"

* * *

><p>"We just passed mile marker seventy-five," Anderson spoke to the cell phone that had been put on speaker so that he wouldn't need to be distracted from driving.<p>

"Pull over," an irritated sounding female voice answered. It was hard to distinguish exactly what was said after that. The other end of the line crackled intermittently with static and the voice was distorted by what Claire guessed to be harsh wind speeds.

"What did she say?"

"I think she said she was going to meet us here." He gave her a barely restrained look of worry, but did as instructed and brought the Company car to park on the shoulder of the highway. They stepped out to wait, Anderson fidgeting with his tie, and Claire happily stretching in the warm sunshine. Roughly two minutes passed before a billowing plume of sand came ripping across the horizon in their direction. The winds of the speedster agent whipped Claire's hair about her face as she came to a stop with Mohinder Suresh mere feet from colliding with the car.

"Craig, we may have a problem." Michels waved at him to follow her a ways a away from their charges so that they could speak in private.

"Dr. Suresh," Claire greeted the windburned scientist with little enthusiasm given their present set of circumstances. "It's good to see you again."

"Yes, Claire, it is nice to see you again as well," he smiled before tossing a look over his shoulder at the quarreling agents. "I only wish that it were under better conditions."

"Do you know what's going on?"

"I believe we're expected to go to Odessa and find a cure for this new strain of the Shanti virus."

"No, I mean what the problem is." Claire watched Anderson ruffle his fingers through his hair in agitation as the redhead jabbed a thumb in their direction with a severe look on her face. "It looks bad."

"Nothing new I'm afraid. Not to us anyway," he noted with a grim half-smile for the curious girl. "We had an encounter with Sylar."

Her eyes doubled in shock at the mention of the ability thief. "He's supposed to be dead," she hissed between her teeth. "I saw it at Kirby Square. That sword went right through him! He's supposed to be over with."

"I'm sorry, Claire, but Sylar is very much alive. And doing quite well thanks to the sample of your blood that I had." He could almost see the gathering of mental storm clouds over her head. Rage and anguish clashed together in violence to thunder in her eyes.

"He's coming after me again, isn't he." She stated it so much more as simple fact than a question.

"We have to assume so."

* * *

><p>"You don't understand!" Matt cried out as he was shoved into the improvised holding cell that had been made out of a lab office. "We were here to <em>stop<em> the virus, not let it out!" The agents keeping a tactful distance away from him held their weapons at the ready to keep the point clear. They would not be leaving any time soon.

Everyone had been ordered to the laboratory station on the same floor as the vault in order to restrict movement of any potential contamination. One by one they had been stripped of all their clothing and forced into the chemical shower; Nathan giving the agents that scrubbed his bare body down with long handled brushes steely gazes of defiance; Peter leaning back against the wall barely able to stand on his own two feet; Matt screeching about rights and privacy invasion; Adam proudly flaunting his solid physic and giving a female agent a sly wink; and poor Hiro just doing his best to keep his modesty protected. After being ousted from the shower they were provided white lab coats to cover themselves with while blood samples were drawn to test for infection.

Four drowned rats with hopelessly disheveled hair stared at one another grimly. Adam, being the ostracized cause of all their woes sat alone in the corner as the odd man out. "This is ridiculous," Matt continued to grumble. "They can't keep us like this. We're Americans. We have rights." He took a second glance at Hiro and Adam. "Well, most of us."

"How you feeling, Pete?" Peter looked up at Nathan with glassy but alert eyes. He was slowly coming back around from his stupor however, the weariness remained heavily imprinted on his every feature. He had the appearance of a marathon runner that had drained every last energy reserve to finish a 25K race.

"I've been worse." A little crooked smile lifted the edge of his mouth in genuine humor and set his brother at ease. Hiro quietly coughed into his hand causing a particularly vile smirk to rise from Adam's corner of the room.

* * *

><p>"This way please," Michels directed as she brought the group to a screeching halt outside the front door of Primatech Paper. Mohinder turned a curious shade of green considering his naturally darkened complexion from the high speed method of travel. Anderson fiddled with his tie and jacket, attempting to straighten the fabric back into a neat state of order, and Claire merely brushed the dust from her shoulders and blew a puff of breath at the hair that matted in front of her eyes.<p>

Together they traversed the halls that were all too eerily familiar to Claire. She recognized many of the overly casual office workers that congregated about the water coolers or sat typing at their desks. While they were doing actual office work as the front of the Company was in fact, a real company, she had to wonder how many of the pen toting paper pushers pulled double shifts of the secret agent variety. It seemed like another person's life from another time when things were much more simple as she thought about how many occasions had brought her to the building to visit her father. Of course, that had all been before she knew that his day job consisted of "bagging and tagging" people with super powers all over the world rather than slapping together cheesy sales pitches.

The group wandered through a warehouse area, dodging forklifts carrying enormous pallets of paper products for loading until they reached a back office section. To anyone caught unaware the security guards working the station were simply overseeing the loading of trucks and making sure that there weren't any thieves running amuck. But to the trained eye they were taser wielding guardians of what lay beyond. Craig held open an office door for the doctor and ladies to pass through before taking pride of place with his partner in front of a large mirror hanging behind a typical desk. Together they swung the mirror open like another hinged door and exposed a secret passage sealed by electronic locking mechanisms. Security clearance cards were swiped, and the group were funneled through a series of maze-like corridors specifically designed to confuse and impede anyone that didn't already know where they were going.

As they descended deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building, turning this way and that, both Mohinder and Claire hopelessly lost without the agents leading them, their journey was brought to an abrupt stop. "Stay where you are!" A small contingent of agents had posted themselves outside of the door that lead to the final floor where they needed to be and refused to let them pass by gun point. Anderson reflexively pulled Claire by the arm to stand behind him while Michels not so subtly asserted herself in front of Mohinder. She had felt that Craig would take his guardianship over her seriously, but she never expected the speedster to care for her charge as thoroughly. Though it did make sense in a way since one without the other would be equally useless against a virus that took both to stop it.

"We have the regen and doctor," Gloria breathed evenly, her muscles tensing for a fight while Craig's trigger finger itched to pull for his sidearm.

"Do I look like I give a shit?" the leader asked, stepping forward. "Did you even read the code black we all got? Some idiot opened the vault and let 138 out. These floors are in indefinite lock down. No one gets in. No one gets out." He towered over her slighter height using his stature as an intimidation tactic. His efforts were fruitless. Agent Michels didn't strike Claire as the kind of woman to be easily shaken by anything.

"The laboratories we need to create the cure are on that floor."

"So use another one," he huffed in annoyance. "Try the third floor. There's six different labs up there."

"And how do you suppose we're going to get the cure to our people that you have locked down there if the floor is sealed?"

"You don't." The opposing agent sneered at her as if the answer should have been obvious from the beginning. "They knew the risks before going down there. It's a part of the job."

"So you're just going to leave them to die?" Craig flushed red and his breath was labored as if he were just barely restraining himself from taking a swing at the other man.

"That's the idea. Dunno about you people, but _we're_ not real keen on getting our families killed." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the men willing to back him on his decision to not let the virus escape. They were less than twenty-four hours into the outbreak and factions were already beginning to form for self-interest. Michels kept her eyes locked with their opponent as she turned away from him until basic anatomy forced her to do otherwise in a bold gesture of fearlessness.

In a flash all four members of their group were back at the other end of the hall out of earshot from the contingent of agents. "Do you really believe that you can form a cure?" the speedster demanded of Mohinder.

"If this strain of the virus is anything like the others then we should be able to."

"I don't want to hear '_should_'," she snapped back at him.

"What are you thinking?" Craig and Gloria shared a long look that left Claire with the impression that Anderson either secretly held an ability to read her mind, or that they had been partners long enough to take part in such silent communication. "You're not seriously considering leaving them down there? Those are good people. _Our_ people."

"They're _right_, Craig," she huffed. "We can't risk letting that virus out. You've seen the testing results the same as everybody else." Michels turned on Mohinder with a frightfully serious expression that spelled lethal consequences should he not fulfill her expectations. "Which is why I need to know for sure that you can make that cure before we break down that door and open Pandora's box." He started to nod in affirmation again but the agent cut him off with a snarl. "I need a _yes_. Be _absolutely_ positive."

Mohinder took his thoughtful moment to look down on a hopeful Claire. She was but a child still, her narrow shoulders burdened with the weight of the world, and yet she resisted the crushing force with the same bright-eyed courage that made her Uncle Peter such an admirable man. Given an undesirable set of circumstances, she was prepared to do her best to help those in need. But she also had a very potent ability at her disposal. What did he have? He was simply an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary situations where lives depended on the decisions he made. To allow men to die for the preservation of the world? Or to face the goddess Kali and potentially open a veritable Pandora's box of evil as the agent had suggested? Cold logic indicated that the former, rather than the latter, were the correct answer; but Suresh was firmly aware that life never took the shape of plainly black and white numbers. There were always percentages and outliers. Even if the building remained sealed indefinitely, it would have been impossible to predict every possible escape route for an entity smaller than three hundred nanometers. And so the answer became clear. "Yes."

In another barely conceivable blur of motion, the red streak appeared back where she had started, but that time in possession of all the other agents' weapons. Craig gave her a cheeky wink before lifting his sidearm against the rogue band. "Open the door."

* * *

><p>"Alright," Nathan clasped his hands, leaning forward to speak to the others conspiratorially, "is there any way that you can teleport all of us out of here, Hiro?" The commanding tone that he used as the eldest Petrelli brother had long been used to acting in a leadership capacity came off as slightly ridiculous given his nearly nude and sopping wet status, but the gesture was none the less seen as beneficial by the others. They needed someone to rally behind that could give focus to their collective efforts.<p>

Nakamura nudged his glasses back up onto the bridge of the nose as he made a blink's worth of eye contact with everyone. Had Adam not made himself indispensable by withholding the location of his supposed cure to the virus, he may not have had many qualms with leaving the immortal behind, but as that was not an option the time traveler was left with four passengers for transport. If he could depend on an opportunity to relocate them all one by one there wouldn't have been a moment's hesitation; but again as that was not the case at hand, how could they choose which would go and whom would have to risk being caught? "I have never teleported more than one."

Though it pained him to decline the rest of the circle understood. "Okay," Nathan nodded, rethinking his approach. "They have to come back for us sometime. As soon as they open the door you can freeze time. Matt, think you can Jedi-mind-trick us out of here?"

"I can help with that." Peter sat up with optimistic alertness, eager to take part in the plans, only to be pushed back into his slouching position by his brother.

"You've used your powers enough today."

"Yeah. I think we can probably make that work." Parkman didn't seem altogether convincing, but the way that Adam kept staring at him was making him extremely uncomfortable, and anything was better than having to tug on his lab coat for better coverage every five seconds. Not to mention the encroaching sense of claustrophobia that the tight quarters were spawning.

A little more than twenty minutes of boredom spent in awkward silence later, the door to their cell opened with a rusty squeak. "Alright, we've got your lab results back," announced the agent that had taken charge of the containment team. He had donned a more appropriate biohazard suit that caused his voice to be mildly distorted through the respirator and held a patient chart with a disproportionately thick stack of notes clipped to it. Whatever else he had to say other than the arrival of their testing results was left to wait for another time though. Hiro worked his magic to freeze the immediate area in place so that the group could make their escape.

As the agent had been made stationary while still holding the cell door open, Nathan was forced to crouch down and maneuver beneath his outstretched arm as he lead the way to freedom, but only after taking a long moment to gawk at the living statue and give him a gentle poke in the process. "That's nifty." Matt had some difficulty squeezing through the narrow passage as the others had, and in the middle of a slight wiggle bumped into Hiro whom had proceeded him causing the smaller man to lose his balance. Peter was there to lend a helping hand however, and spared his comrade the fate of taking a nosedive into the hard tile floor. They were all unexceptional happenings really, but the significance of it was at an unperceivable scale. Invisible to the naked eye, thousands of infectious agents of the Shanti virus had been spread from Hiro's hand which he had coughed on, onto Peter's forearm.

"Sorry," Matt apologized as he heaved himself back to his feet.

"Anyone remember the way out?" Parkman tried to read the mind of a motionless Company agent in the hall, but as she was frozen in time so were her thoughts, making the method of his and Nathan's entrance an unlikely exit strategy. Peter looked up and down the hall in both directions. He thought he may have remembered the path from the vault, but he had been mostly incapacitated from the time the agents had taken him from there to their holding area.

"I do." Adam proudly presented himself at the back of the line. Without further ado, he asserted himself as the group's guide and began to march ahead.

Nathan leaned towards Matt to whisper, "Is he telling the truth?"

He quirked his head off to the side as he gained a read on the ostentatious blonde preparing to disappear around a corner. "Amazingly, yes. He wants out of here just as bad as we do."

"But do we trust him?"

Peter snorted lightly. "Do we have any other choice?"

"Don't come any closer!" The high-pitched tone of a strained voice echoed back to them from the direction Monroe had wandered off in. Matt rolled his eyes. Peter and Nathan exchanged glances of irritation. And Hiro scratched his head absent-mindedly, internally questioning how someone had avoided his ability as he ran after the others that had gone in chase of Adam.

Not far from where they had been contained, they found an agitated redhead holding Adam at gunpoint. He merely stood scowling with his arms crossed in a petulant manner, no doubt pouting over the fact that his escape had been foiled again. She had ordered him to get down on the floor, but he stubbornly refused knowing that the bullets wouldn't have any effect on him. The only reason that he had stopped in his tracks at all was because the going was much slower anyways without kneecaps, and healing ability or none, that _hurt. _

"Are you infected?" shouted her partner from behind her. A man that they all assumed was a part of the "one of us" crowd since he had no rudimentary need to assert his masculinity by protecting his partner.

"No," Nathan responded, holding his hands up as he had for the agents before. "We don't think so." His sudden noise startled the other group and their aim trained on him, but quickly faltered when Craig was almost knocked over by an impatient Claire peeking out from around his side.

"Peter?" Her eyes had widened at the sight of the uncle she hadn't seen since the night of Kirby Plaza and thought lost. Before anyone had been able to stop her, the girl bolted out from her shielded position and took a bounding leap into his openly welcome arms. Mohinder too, strolled over to reunite with his friends, though at a much more casual pace.

"This is going to be a long night," Gloria groaned, replacing her pistols in their holsters. Anderson, in spite of his partner's complaints, was content to smile serenely on the view of the happily greeting family blissfully unaware that they had just released all the evils from the box that he had helped to crack the lid on. As Peter embraced a joyously crying Claire, the virus was spread from his arms to hers, and then to Nathan's left hand when he took his turn, and finally to the eye that he scratched without thought unfurling a sleeping menace in his bloodstream.

**To be continued...**


	4. Lockdown

**3**

**Lockdown**

* * *

><p><em>March 20, 2007<em>

She could feel his stare, raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck to the point of tingling long before she turned to meet the eyes watching her. The air was already thick with tension, but as Claire slid free from her uncle's welcoming arms the entire world seemed to pause and take notice of the first time they saw one another.

From her vantage point of being tucked safely under Peter's shoulder, she took in the scope of the man unabashedly gazing at her. His fair skin tone made her think of someone that hadn't seen daylight often for ages, but the flawless complexion accompanying it made it difficult to tell exactly how old he was. With his ruffled, sandy blonde hair, wrinkled laboratory coat that distorted his figure, and mutely neutral facial expression, there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary or unusual about him. Claire knew that he must have had an ability by the simple fact that he was there, but she decided that it was his eyes which really gave away the secret. Behind the stormy blues were eons of haunting experience that silently observed and calculated her every movement with an intensity and focus that she had never known before. He didn't move, didn't speak, or make any motion to acknowledge her existence, and yet, through those eyes she felt an electric sort of connection with the magnitude of being struck by lightning.

There was no name that came to her which she could use to label the sensation accurately. Had they met before? No, but there was a feeling of recognition. She knew him somehow even if she didn't know why or how. He was handsome for sure with all of his features neatly aligning in a classically striking way, but that wasn't what it was causing her to feel so drawn to him. It was much more profound than skin deep. It was something raw and primal being roughly dragged to the surface from where it had once been buried and long forgotten. Instincts perhaps, like fellow members of the same species identifying one another without conscious effort. Whatever it was, when their eyes locked for that first second the effect was numbing, and overwhelming, and absolutely magnetizing all at once.

Someone nudged her shoulder to tear her out of their mutual reverie and Claire realized that both Peter and Nathan were gazing at her expectantly. One of them had asked her a question and they were waiting for an answer. How long had she been staring at the strange man without even noticing that people were continuing to talk to her?

"Sorry," she mumbled with a half-sheepish smile for her family as she raked her fingers through her windblown hair. "Long day. I'm a little out of it." Even after she had broken the line of sight between them to turn her attention to Peter who was too preoccupied with other events to notice the interaction, he continued to stare at her shamelessly. Had either of them blinked? Was he even breathing? A heavy burning that had settled in the depths of her chest warned her that she hadn't for some time so Claire released the breath that she didn't even register she was holding and drew in another sweet puff of air scented with mechanical ions from purifiers and the pungent aroma of antiseptic.

"Yeah, I think it's probably been a long day for all of us." Agent Anderson piped up from where he had come to stand protectively at her side.

"I'm sure it has." Nathan didn't bother to flash the agent one of his winning politician smiles. His attentions too were drawn to more important matters such as the unsettling signs of physical attraction between his daughter and the rat-bastard that had gotten them all stuck in this mess. "Where's Noah?" he prompted her again hoping to break up the concentration of hormones clouding her vision. His efforts were fruitless. Claire had returned to watching Monroe's unwavering watching of her.

Nathan hadn't seen such an instant connection as that since the days of his youth when he had first Claire's mother, Meredith, and they all knew how that had turned out. They were in for more trouble than a runaway virus, and to be perfectly honest, he wasn't sure which he feared more.

"Quebec," she muttered, almost breathlessly. He was mildly nauseated by what was happening right in front of him but at least she had heard him that time. That was some amount of progress he supposed. "The Company has a clean zone there. Bob Bishop said that he could take my mom and Lyle there until we cure the virus."

Matt perked up from his conversation with Mohinder about what he had had to do with Molly in order to get her safely away from the situation and the possible reemergence of Sylar when he overheard the name. "Bob Bishop?" he silently mouthed to Nathan over Claire's head with a worried expression. The Petrelli gave him a nearly imperceptible nod in return. Bishop had been one of the Company founders' names that they had uncovered. He had been in the photograph with Angela, his father, Kaito, and all the others that were being targeted for termination by Adam. It didn't bode well that they were all being tied together in the impending disaster.

"A clean zone?" That was all that Peter seemed to take away from all the buzzing conversations happening around him, and the others too caught onto the hope those words obviously held for the hero. "That's great. We can get all these people out of here." He was talking to Nathan but his brother was frowning at the agents attempting to impose their presence around Claire.

"That won't be possible, Mr. Petrelli," Michels asserted with an air of absolute authority.

"What? Why not? We can teleport them all –"

"All of you have been exposed to the virus. I can't let you leave here." The speedster brought her hands to rest on the pistols in their holsters, letting an edge of threat creep into her voice.

After being a prosecutor for the DA in New York, a congressman, and then a reluctant hero in the face of his mother's wishes for their beloved city to be destroyed, there weren't many things that could intimidate or strike fear in Nathan's heart. An agent for the Company with a few measly guns wasn't about to start frightening him after experiencing what it was like to be microwaved when his brother nearly nuked him as the human bomb detonated in the atmosphere. Really, what's scary after taking a ride on that kind of explosive misadventure? But there was something in the other agent that was forming a pit in the bottom of his stomach to match those that lingered there for all their other issues.

As he watched the man's downcast eyes linger about his shoes and a nervous hand run through his already mussed locks, Nathan didn't need to confront them to know that a lie was being told. And a big one at that. Not only were they not going to make it out of Primatech without a serious fight on their hands and possibly a few casualties along the way, but he internally questioned the assurances Claire had been given that her family would remain safe. For all he knew they had been cornered by agents the minute she was out of sight and executed. He wasn't about to let her know that though.

"You don't understand," Peter huffed. "I've…" he shook his head in frustration, attempting to figure out the best way to explain what he knew without sounding like a total nutjob. "I've been to the future. I've seen what this virus is going to do if we don't get everyone out of here."

Michels snorted in disbelief but the empath held Anderson's rapt attention. "What about the team that was supposed to be down here already? Protocol should have been to test –" Everyone stopped dead in the middle of their arguments to turn and stare in horror when Hiro sneezed.

"So sorry," he muttered in embarrassment. It took him a moment to realize that they weren't looking him at him in simple disgust because he hadn't been prepared to catch the sneeze, or being rude, but that the thoughts running over them all in a continuous circle were of the virus and their supposed exposure. An uncomfortably awkward smile lifted his lips as he fumbled for a way to explain. He couldn't have been infected. He hadn't even been in the vault when the vial was broken.

Hiro raised his hands in a pleading gesture of innocence but everyone in the crowd managed to take a unanimous step backward from him. Craig and his partner had their pistols drawn in a heartbeat, each moving to protectively shield their charges. Nathan grabbed hold of Matt's arm to drag him back with them when Peter took the point position in the middle of everyone, his arms stretched out to keep the peace. "Nobody panic," he commanded. "It's just a little sneeze. We don't know that it's the virus."

"_Actually_, yes we do, Mr. Petrelli." Their captors in the biohazard suits had returned, coming out of their time-frozen stasis and following the raucous caused by the agents' entry into the facility. The team leader waved his clipboard of blood testing results with an air of absolute authority.

* * *

><p>Noah Bennet pulled off to the side of the dusty road at the first mile marker he saw several hours after crossing the California border into Arizona. He had been keeping a weather eye out for anyone that might be tailing the family car, but he doubted that the Company thought of them as enough of a threat to bother with after making sure that they had left the state as promised. Lyle was reclined in the backseat, his sleepy head bobbing with the rhythm of the road against the glass of the window and his skewed headphones continuing to blast what the boy thought passed for music.<p>

"What's going on?" Sandra had far too many things on her mind to let herself pass out the way their son had. She had spent all but a few minutes of the trip thus far with her chin planted in the palm of her hand and her elbow perched on the window ledge, gazing right through the scenery that she wasn't really seeing as it passed them by on the road.

He tugged his glasses off to polish an imaginary smudge from one of the lenses with the bottom of his shirt. He didn't want to have to look his wife in the eye when he told her that he had to leave again. "I have to go, Sandra."

Her head snapped around to give him a chilly glare. She had already surpassed her quota for dealing with malarkey for the day and wasn't about to have any more. "What do you mean, you 'have to go'? Go where, Noah?" The steel in her tone was as sharp as a razor and her hands flapped helplessly in her lap for their desolate surroundings. There wasn't a sign of civilization anywhere in sight. Only a long stretch of blacktop snaking its way through the desert and cacti for as far as the eye could see.

"I have to get back to Claire," he started slowly, purposefully, and holding her eye contact to convey his sincerity. "The Company has contingency plans in place to take care of the virus so that it doesn't get out of control. I have to get Claire out of there before those plans get put into motion."

"What kind of plans?" She wasn't used to hearing the sound of doubt in her husband's voice and it caught her off guard. "What about Quebec and the clean zone?"

Noah replaced his glasses, a ray of sunlight glinting off of the rim like they were a piece of armor meant to protect him from what had to be done. "I want you to take Lyle and go north. Get as far north as you can. The virus won't be able to spread as quickly in the cold, and it might not reach all the way up into the arctic. There's money in the bags, and gloves and surgical masks. Avoid people, Sandra. Kill them if you have to, but you get Lyle out of here."

"Noah, I don't –" Her words were cut off by the insistent press of his lips against hers and the calloused hand digging its fingers through her hair. He hadn't kissed her like that in years and it stole the breath from her lungs. It felt so much like a goodbye that she didn't want him to ever let go; not after she had already lost so much. The man that she had married though was no one if not a man of action, and once he had his mind on a mission, there was no stopping him. "What about the clean zone?" she asked again after her head had stopped spinning quite so much.

Noah leaned back in through the door from where he had gotten out of the car. He glanced at her, and then to their son obliviously snoring with his nose pushed up to the glass so that it fogged a little with every breath he took, and regretfully back to her again. "There is no clean zone." With that, he slammed the door shut, pulled his over shirt over his head for shade from the sun that beat down on him mercilessly, and began to jog off into the distance at a steady pace.

* * *

><p>Maya felt the grip of tiny fingers tighten on her hand as the crowd surged around them like ocean waves set to a pattern of currents that they were trying to rush against. Body after frustrated body brushed and elbowed into them around the security section of the terminal. She and Molly had reached JFK hours earlier and collected their tickets to Mumbai without trouble, but as they waited for boarding to start in a pair of plastic bucket seats the tension around them had begun to build.<p>

During the wait for their first flight which would layover in London, a security detail had swept through the area with metal detection wands and sniffing canines. An older woman in a regal looking fur coat fit for a trip to the arctic had been allowed to be escorted by guards across the tarmac to a waiting private jet which they watched depart through the open bay windows, but everyone else had been detained without a reason given as to why. Their bags were checked and rechecked; everyone was tentatively frisked and wanded, but still they were made to stay where they were. Not a single flight had been allowed to arrive or depart causing a bit of an uprising.

Turmoil grew amongst the agitated throng as nothing changed hour after intense hour. And then the entire facility had gone into lockdown, every door around the airport being sealed closed so that none could venture in, out, or otherwise. Rumors began to circulate that a terrorist threat had been made about some kind of biological contaminant. Since the events of the September attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, things of that nature were taken with deadly seriousness and their situation was no exception.

A news report flashed across the screen of a television mounted in one of the lobbies. The anchor reported an emergency shutdown of every airport in the country as ordered by Homeland Security. Incoming flights would be allowed to land, but would be redirected to either Canada or Mexico where possible, and no flight would leave the US until further notice. The national borders were also to be closed and the military was being mobilized to ensure that that happened as it was supposed to. Shortly after the initial report, the television had been cut off causing uproar from the trapped citizens.

Since English was not her native language, Maya struggled to understand everything that was happening around them. Molly occasionally stepped in to interpret and translate things when her guardian of the moment started to lose her cool a bit, but mostly she just helped her remember to breath. The DHS teams swarming the place would really freak if she lost control of her ability, not to mention the risk for mass casualty in the middle of what was destined to become the largest quarantine zone in global history.

* * *

><p>Nathan finished flipping through the pages of data that the agents in the biohazard suits had collected with the group's blood work. In all honesty he had no idea what most of it meant. There were a few tables of number values and some very colorful charts, a picture of what appeared to a series of blue-green squiggle marks that one of his grade school age children could have drawn, and a whole lot of medical jargon where even the words that he could pronounce just sounded made up. But in the interest of maintaining control over the situation, he glued a stern expression to his face and pretended to know what in the hell he was looking at. And then he handed it over to Peter without a word, fixing a steely gaze on the Company staff, and secretly hoping to gauge the severity of events by his brother's reaction to the news.<p>

"This can't be right." Peter turned a few pages over on the clipboard, knitting his eyebrows tightly together in concentration as he read the Company's findings. Nathan lifted a skeptical brow at the men and women before him so that he was ready to catch them in some kind of scheme; lying to keep them detained without a real cause no doubt. "Hiro can't be infected," Peter muttered almost to himself as he turned another page back and forth to compare figures. In response to the revelation, Nathan relaxed his critical pose into one more appropriately morose but still gravely serious. "He wasn't even in the vault when the vial was broken."

Peter slapped the clipboard down on the table with a little more force than he had initially intended so that the noise clattered around the room. He draped his weary head in his hands, his fingers lacing their way through his newly shorn locks with a heavy sigh. The Petrelli brothers had volunteered themselves as spokesmen on behalf of the rest of the "special" group and were pulled aside to speak with the Company's team leader in private so that each party could present an amicable solution of how to best address the problem. While the agents on lockdown in the lower floors of the building with them were heavily armed and confident, they were also smart enough to realize that they would risk unnecessary casualties when pitted up against "specials" that had been pushed into a desperate corner. But no matter the cost, they had to be convinced to stay put lest the contagion escape into the general population and run away overnight.

"It had to be Adam." Peter raised his disappointed eyes to meet his brother's in apology. "Hiro was alone with Adam in the vault while we were… Adam had to have done something to infect him. They're right, Nathan. We've been sitting down here with him this whole time. We're exposed, and we almost – God, Nathan, we almost walked out of here."

Nathan sat up a little straighter and clapped a consoling hand down on his younger sibling's shoulder, frowning but letting his eyes say that he understood, even if he still wasn't sure that he did. At least Peter had only mentioned one person's name when reading over the notes about the infection. As cold as it may have seemed to anyone else, to a Petrelli that was a positive because at least it wasn't _his_ name. "It will be alright, Pete. Hiro is the only one that has the virus," he hoped. "We'll find a way to cure him before –"

"No, it's not alright, Nathan." Peter burst out of his chair at the table so quickly that it startled the agents sitting across from them. One had reached for her gun but Nathan waved her off. His brother was upset but not a physical danger; again, he _hoped_ because whether he had healed or not the night at Kirby Plaza was still irrevocably burned into his memory. "I've seen what this virus can do. I saw the bodies, Nathan, of all the people it could have killed. And I almost let it get out. Not once, but _twice_. So stupid!" He paced back and forth in agitation a few times before his temper got the better of him and his fist made a solid connection with the top of the table that made the anxious agents jump in their seat all over again.

"Hiro –"

"Hiro's not the only one that's infected," Peter grumbled from between clenched teeth. Nathan felt his gut bottom out for a moment in fear that he had somehow misinterpreted the information that had been presented to him. "These labs don't mean anything anymore. Not when we've been stuck in the same room with him. It's not airborne, but he's been coughing and then the sneeze. Everything around him has been contaminated - including us."

"So you can understand why we can't let you leave now, Mr. Petrelli." The Company team leader's helmet made an irritating sound of fluctuating air every time he spoke and it was reminding Nathan of Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies. It was steadily getting on his nerves when not made in an entertainment friendly atmosphere.

"So, we all get tested again," Nathan offered as a compromise. "We'll even go through the… scrubby, uh, _decontamination_ thing again. And then when we're clean –"

"There's not enough time to repeat the testing procedures," Peter said softly. "Not for Hiro anyways. The virus only has a six hour incubation period, and it has now been," Peter paused to lean across the table and steal a peek at one of the agents' watches, "fourteen hours since his initial exposure. Even if he didn't pick it up right away… It's already colonizing at the base of his brain."

Nathan knew enough about medicine to know that he didn't like the sound of _that_ one bit. "This particular Shanti pathogen presents like limbic encephalitis." Agent Vader as he was coming to know him slid a hand across the table to take his precious clipboard of notes back. "As blood is circulated to the brain, the virus and lymphocytes are carried to the brain stem which will start to become inflamed. It primarily attacks the nervous system which is why your abilities will quickly degrade, and then disappear altogether. First symptoms include fever, headache, and sneezing, coughing, fairly typical flu type things. And then patients begin hallucinate, which if they still have control of their ability by that point, can get very interesting." Vader had the nerve to offer them a dry smile. Both brothers quietly resolved that if he didn't wipe it off his face soon they were going to lunge across the table separating them and do it for him. No one could find amusement in such a thing and still call themselves a human being.

"Towards the end, if the fever doesn't literally burn them up, patients with Shanti number 138 either slip into a coma, or they undergo pulmonary edema and essentially drown in their blood. The ones we were able to study back in the seventies usually had a time frame of about thirty-six to forty-eight hours from onset to death with a mortality rate of one hundred percent, but we've figured a more realistic world rate of approximately eighty-five percent."

Nathan didn't have to look for his brother's reaction to know that what he was being told was very, _very_ bad. If it had been fourteen hours since Hiro's exposure, maybe eleven or twelve since their own, that only gave them a rather unsettling window of roughly thirty-six hours before they could have been facing their own deaths.

"And we only have," Vader dramatically lifted his wrist to peer at his watch, "ten hours left before Company protocols for decontamination are put into action." They liked the nefarious sound of _that_ even less. They had not only worked themselves into a corner, it was a corner built on a frying pan and the agents were fixing to light a fire on top of it. "Fortunately for you though, we happen to have a cure lined up."

The lead agent smirked victoriously at Nathan from behind the protective helmet of his fancy suit like he could read his mind and were gloating about being their saving grace. It sort of tempted him to try flipping one of the levers that secured the helmet in place so that his air would be just as "contaminated" as theirs. After all of his training in flight suits as a pilot he was pretty darn sure that he could get the job done before Vader would even know what hit him. Maybe that would teach him a little something about douchebaggery in times of crisis.

"Claire?" Peter drummed his fingers on the table as though it were the only activity keeping him from doing something far worse to the Company flunkies than anything his brother was coming up with.

"Ms. Bennet does have a part to play, yes," the agent confirmed with another annoying intake of whooshing air. "The Shanti virus originated with Mr. Suresh's sister when she was a child. Unfortunately she died of the disease before we had much of an opportunity to examine her." The faces of both the Petrellis flushed with barely constrained rage at the thought of the little girl having been subjected to Company probes. "But as it turns out, Mr. Suresh holds the antibodies necessary for the cure, and Ms. Bennet's regenerative power provides a boost."

Nathan's teeth made an audible grinding sound because he was clenching his jaw so tightly. Not only were their lives being toyed with, but the egomaniacal jackass in front of him was going to strong arm them for the right to bleed his daughter dry. A fleeting thought crossed his mind that he may have forced them to do it over his cold, dead body. However much Vader had stepped on his toes though, it was nothing compared to the waves of blind emotion that were pouring off of Peter. Tiny jolts of static electricity started jumping from the tips of his fingers to crawl across the surface of the table toward the agents. Nathan had never really been afraid of his little brother before, but if he hadn't already been entirely focused on other matters, he thought he might have felt a touch of fear then.

"Ms. Bennet has already agreed to assist us in these matters in exchange for the safety of her family."

"She's a seventeen-year-old girl," Peter all but growled back. "She has no idea what she's consenting to."

"Need I really remind you gentlemen that the Company is _not_ the villain in all of this? We are offering you a cure to a virus which _you_ had a hand in releasing. Once you have been given a dose, then you will be allowed to return home after the mandatory twenty-four hour quarantine." Vader stood up along with the other agents, a cool note souring the room's balance of power as they held the winning ticket. "Of course, if you would rather have Ms. Bennet subjected to witnessing your deaths and a potential pandemic because you were too proud to let her help, well, then that can be arranged.

They were nearly out the door before Nathan was able to summon the backbone to speak again. "Wait."

* * *

><p>Sylar accepted another glass of orange juice from the stewardess with a smile. He was almost disappointed really at how easy it had been to tail Elle all the way to her plane even through the chaos that had erupted when the airport was more or less shut down. There was a mild amount of curiosity as to why her flight was the only one allowed to take off, but since the Company was involved he wasn't too concerned about specifics. After that, all he had needed was to clean up a touch in the restroom after finding another agent roughly his size to rob of clothing and identification. He had flipped security the badge too quickly for them to really see anything was amiss for sure and no one had asked to see it a second time. Either his impersonation skills were improving greatly or they were getting incredibly sloppy in their haste to get moving.<p>

Elle hadn't turned around once to notice him. She sat only a few seats down and across the aisle but with her attention on a small laptop computer and earphones impeding her sense of hearing he wasn't worried about being caught. So long as he was the first one off the plane when it landed in Texas he had nothing to fear.

A smug little smile tore its way across his face when he listened to the pilot announce that they would be making their landing outside Odessa within a few minutes. Claire was going to be so thrilled to see him again.

* * *

><p>He was staring again. He was still half wrapped in the same kind of lab coat as her Uncle Peter and the others that had been stuck in the lower levels of Primatech, but unlike the others that were actively trying to keep the openings of their coats pinched closed, he didn't seem to care. And he just kept staring. Claire had to avert her eyes, if not because she couldn't return the same amount of intensity, then to hide the blush that had crept into the apples of her cheeks and refused to leave. She didn't even know his name.<p>

They had bumped into one another after the second group of agents had shown up. Claire wasn't sure if it was the accident that she thought it was or if he had arranged it somewhat. Either she had been backed up farther than she thought by Craig and Nathan, or he had managed to nudge himself forward some. When she had turned around to head down the corridor that the agents had pointed everyone towards, she had been surprised by a face full of firm body that she had walked straight into without looking. Her palms had rushed ahead to push her away from the obstruction in a knee-jerk reaction and she had also ended up with a sizable grope of the flesh wall hidden behind the thin material of the coat. Of course she had instantly apologized and scooted away from the humiliation as fast as her short legs could carry her, but in retrospect it hadn't been a totally unpleasant grope. If he had been bothered by the temporary interaction he hadn't shown it at all. She didn't think he had really minded though.

He seemed to be kind of a loner, or maybe just plain lonely, she thought as Mohinder directed her where to sit in one of the lab stations. No one had really talked to him that she had seen since arriving. Everyone had just sort of pushed their way past him if he happened to be in the way, avoiding him otherwise except to make sure that he was sticking with the group. The only concern they seemed to have was that he didn't wander off on his own. Given their circumstances she thought that that was probably a good idea but doubted that he would have been a problem since he had automatically followed wherever she had gone with the others. He still hadn't said a word. But then again, he didn't really have to.

Mohinder had wrapped a length of rubber tourniquet tubing around her arm above the elbow, chattering away at her descriptions and explanations of everything that he was doing. He didn't notice that she wasn't listening, but Nathan had. He intermittently shot icy glares at Adam from underneath his heavy eyebrows while he watched what the geneticist was doing. He and Peter had come to agreement with the Company agents that they wouldn't interfere with what Claire had to do so long as it was one of their own that performed the procedures and none of the agents made a move to touch her without either his or Peter's express consent. They may have had a responsibility to clean up the mess for the part they had played, but that wasn't going to stop them from protecting their own.

A needle that seemed far too long to be able to fit all the way into her slender arm was inserted and she didn't even seem to notice when Mohinder himself had squinted in doubt while doing the dirty work. Adam had remained quietly at the back of the crowd, mostly forgotten except for a few of the agents that had recognized him and weren't about to let him out of their sight, but his eyes closely followed everything that was being done to Claire. He balanced on the tips of his toes so that he could better see over the shoulders of the others when the girl's crimson blood swiftly flowed into a plastic vial that was secured as though it were a precious commodity. The actions to fill the vial were repeated multiple times until a set of about two dozen of the little containers had been collected.

As fascinating as all that had been though, it was what happened afterward that held Adam's attention so fixedly. The scientist had been unnecessarily ginger about the removal of his needlework and the tape that had held it all in place while he drew the samples of her blood so that Claire finally became a little frustrated with trying to explain that he could really just rip it out and she would be fine. In the end she had swat his dark hands out of the way and gave the line leading out of her arm a healthy jerk that tore the needle free with a minor spurt of blood. Mohinder had squirmed a bit at the sight. Craig, Gloria, and Matt had grimaced and turned away with their nauseas mouths covered. Nathan frowned at her. Peter was too busy examining Hiro to pay her much attention. But Adam watched with joyful intrigue as the wound instantly came to a close before his eyes.

After four hundred years of waiting and searching and countless disappointments he had finally found positive confirmation of the existence of another person like himself. He was no longer alone in the world. In that one moment he felt the burden of immortality lifted from his shoulders and suddenly life didn't feel quite so cold if there was a goddess named Claire that he possibly share it with. Her eyes had turned up to meet his after what she had done, waiting for a reaction from him maybe. He couldn't help but smile down on the girl.

Peter helped to draw samples of Mohinder's blood next, placing the vials in a centrifuge to separate out the plasma cells that were responsible for the antibodies they needed to attack the virus. "True blood serums take too much time and are too expensive to make on the kind of scale that we would need," Suresh explained, mostly for Peter's curiosity since the others either didn't have the expertise to understand what they were talking about or were too wrapped up in their own tribulations to care for details. "So a combination of my immunity and Claire's blood will have to do for now. Sylar took the first batch that was created so I haven't been able to test it for certain."

"Right, we don't have that kind of time." Peter thoughtfully chewed on his lip as he listened to the hum of the centrifuge spinning among the murmur of voices in the background. "Claire's blood will take care of any side effects or blood type incompatibilities, but I wonder if we should get a sample from Hiro." Mohinder's eyes darted up from the sheet of notes that he was taking over their methods to produce the virucide. "Just to make sure."

The geneticist quietly nodded in agreement. They couldn't allow a potential time bomb to walk out of the doors in human petri dishes because of blind faith. As a practiced nurse and scientist it was their duty to follow textbook protocol.

Just one minute after three in the AM, Peter wandered into the next conference over from the lab where he and Mohinder had been working while the Company leader that Nathan had labeled "Vader" fastidiously jotted notes about their procedures and occasionally snapped pictures. Cots had been pulled out of storage and lined the walls, thin linen sheets and shiny Mylar blankets were draped over a few sleeping bodies of agents and across the massive polished oak table for those unlucky enough to have not grabbed a cot in time. Matt was slumped in the corner with his arms tightly folded over his chest and his head hanging to the side snoring. The ones that had introduced themselves as Agents Anderson and Michels chatted with one another under their breath so that others couldn't hear them. They stopped in the middle of their conversation when he entered the room but he didn't really give a damn. Nathan sat with Claire on the end of the table, him patiently waiting and trying to ignore the pounding headache that throbbed behind his eyes, her leaning sleepily against his shoulder. His brother started to get up when he saw him come into the room hoping for news, but Peter waved him off before he could disturb his niece's much needed rest. Adam was stuck between two agents that had taken a shift at watching him so that he wouldn't get away, _again_. He was seemingly drifting around in his own world for the moment, staring off into space with a thoughtful expression on his features, absentmindedly glancing over at Peter and then away again without having really seen anything. There was a fleeting temptation to drag the immortal outside for a righteous ass kicking but he controlled the flare of his temper in the better interest of the group. Staging a knockdown, drag out fight in the middle of a crisis wouldn't set a good behavioral example.

Hiro had exiled himself to the corner farthest away from anyone else without anyone having said a word to him about it. He was curled up in himself, shivering beneath one of the linens that had been brought over, coughing into his hand as quietly as possible so that he wouldn't wake the others. "Hey," Peter greeted him with a comforting smile. Nakamura tried to raise his head enough for a bowing gesture but his friend just nudged back down to the cot. "You're burning up."

Somewhere along the way Peter had picked up a spare stethoscope and lapsed into his old professional routine, pressing the cool metal of the chest piece against Hiro's back to listen to his lungs, and then to his chest to start taking vitals. The thermometer clicked at his ear read a body temperature of one hundred and four degrees that had him deeply frowning. The time traveler was shivering like he had hypothermia but a sheen of sweat clung to his pallid skin. "Here, drink some water."

He tried to refuse at first but Peter was nearly as charming as his politician brother could be when it came to dealing with stubborn patients. He persisted until Hiro accepted the bottle of water that had been placed at his parched lips. And then he gratefully took the painkiller tablets that had been dredged up from a storage cabinet with a weak word of thanks. "We have the serum ready to go now," Peter promised him. "You're going to be fine. We just have to run one more test." Hiro didn't budge a muscle when his blood sample was taken.

"We need to make this quick." Mohinder hurried to prepare their slides when Peter came back to the lab in a rush. "Hiro's lungs are starting to get fluid in them."

"Claire's regenerative properties should be able to reverse that," Suresh muttered. His concentration was on petri dish with Hiro's sample in it which Peter had handed over.

"I hope so."

"It brought you back from death if I remember correctly. It also revived her father, and I'm told that Adam Monroe helped to heal your brother." Peter gave him a look that warned he should be making his point soon. "Everything will work as intended. Hiro will be fine."

Vader came to inspect their work when the regenerative blood with Mohinder's antibodies was introduced to the petri dish, and then a microscope slide made so that they could witness whether or not their impromptu cure was effective. They squinted with one eye and then another, adjusting and focusing until they could see exactly what they needed to beneath the magnification of the light microscope.

Among the field of red blood cells, white, almost fuzzy looking leukocytes or "white" blood cells swarmed to attack. Blood cells were exploding everywhere with fresh copies of the virus which made to infect other healthy cells only to be cut off by the voracious counterattack of the white cells. Infected blood cells were devoured by the leukocytes as well before they could produce any more of the pathogens. It was almost like a battlefield where the fight was for biological superiority. The virus would fall back and then reengage the body's defenders; the antibodies engulfed the invaders like microscopic ameba monsters from an old B horror film while Claire's platelets rushed to create new growth that would repair all the damage.

"We've done it." Vader took his own precious time to study the serum at work and finally agreed that it was an effective cure the virus. They would all be given a preliminary dose to ward off infection and then three more subsequent doses over the course of their quarantine period. If they didn't exhibit any symptoms of the virus and their next batch of blood work came back clean, everyone would be released.

Within the hour Peter, Mohinder, and "Vader" were circulating around the conference room to give everyone a dose of their cure. Claire declined one, as did Peter since his adaptation of her ability was also believed to leave him naturally immune to the Shanti virus. She couldn't help but be a little curious as to why her blonde stranger had been bypassed for a share of the serum without getting a word in edgewise but she got her answer soon enough.

"Hello, Claire."

She jumped a bit at the surprising sound of a voice in her ear. While Peter was preoccupied with tending to Hiro and the others were torn between preparing to sleep or leave, Adam had snuck up behind her. "Hi."

"It's a very brave thing you did today, choosing to help all of these people."

"I didn't think it was much of a choice. I couldn't just let people die if there was a way to stop it." A mysterious smile hovered below the surface for some reason that she didn't completely understand. Was he laughing at her?

"There was a time when I felt the same way. It's very compelling to want to save the world when you're young."

"I'm not that much younger than you are." Claire came across as being a little more defensive than she had really intended to be which made her sound like a petulant child even to herself.

"You might be surprised." He gave her another cryptic smile. "All the same, I wouldn't be so willing to trust the Company if I were you. They aren't exactly known for their honesty when it comes to our kind. It would be a shame if you were to end up in their clutches."

"I can take care of myself." Alright, so maybe he wasn't as handsome as she had originally thought if he was going to try imposing himself as some kind of authority figure or know-it-all. "Besides, they can't do anything to me as long as Peter and my father are here."

"Peter and your father…" Claire could practically see the wheels turn behind his crystal blue eyes as he glanced at the Petrelli brothers going about their respective businesses, Peter nursing the ill and Nathan spinning the room's political dynamics towards his favor. "Angela Petrelli's sons." And then there came the _click_ of understanding. She was the biological granddaughter of his sworn enemy; the very woman that had taken part in the Company's betrayal and incarceration of him – the woman that he had promised to bring death to. How very cruel it was that his long awaited ray of hope should be delivered by the hand that he had bitten.

"Back off Adam." Nathan had noticed their interaction and come put his foot down. "You don't get to talk to her." Behind him, Peter had perked up from his position at Hiro's side. There was no doubt in Adam's mind that the empath would rush to his brother's defense in a heartbeat if a physical altercation were to break out, and as he had seen what Peter was capable of when tried, that wasn't an avenue he was excited about exploring. Agent Anderson was also continuing to take his duties with excruciating seriousness, coming to back up Nathan with his gun drawn.

"Adam? _Adam Monroe_?" Claire too had finally put the pieces together as to who exactly she was dealing with and the hurt look in her eyes when she stared back at him was heartbreaking. Without a word she seemed to accuse him of stabbing her in the back simply by existing.

It should have been obvious. The way the agents had kept tabs on him like security guards, the ambivalent or rude way the others had treated him because they knew who he was and what he had done, and why he had been neglected for the cure to the Shanti virus. He was the man that her father had told her about. He was the one that was supposed to be like her. The one that was supposed to be like _Sylar_. The one person in the world that she thought she should have been able to talk to and to question, the one that she had had an instant connection to for no reason that she could explain to herself, was the same man responsible for nearly ending the world and her family with it. The truth cut deep, but the disgust for how she might have felt around him hurt worse.

Her pain was reflected four hundred times in his eyes as agents dragged him out of the room to be locked away as a prisoner once more. What he had hoped was meant to be was already over before being given a chance. Sometimes fate was a cruel and unusual bitch.

Elsewhere, more events were unfolding beyond the awareness of the Company or the heroes that had thought they were successful in saving the day. Elle Bishop had donned her biohazard suit and was in the process of joining the rest of the group on the lower floors of the Primatech facility. Sylar, their personal Boogeyman was worming his way through ductwork to bypass security measures and inadvertently breach lockdown measures taken to keep the virus contained on his quest to reach ultimate power. Noah Bennet was screaming down the highway to Odessa in a stolen car, periodically stealing peeks at his watch and doing his best to push the vehicle faster in order to beat the clock that continued to countdown towards secret decontamination protocols. And back in Mohinder's lab where the petri dish of virus that they had assumed was cured sat under the view of the light microscope, the white blood cells that had absorbed the disease began to degrade and then spontaneously die releasing millions more of the viral bodies.

**To be continued…**


End file.
